Senators see overlap in dueling plans

Senate Republicans on Tuesday roundly criticized Majority Leader Harry Reid’s plan to raise the nation’s debt ceiling, but they left the door open to a possible compromise between rival proposals floated by the Nevada Democrat and GOP House Speaker John Boehner.

Members of both parties highlighted the fact that the dueling House and Senate plans have two major elements in common: Both call for $1.2 trillion in discretionary spending cuts over the next decade and would create a 12-member bipartisan committee of lawmakers to identify future savings.

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They even share the same title: The Budget Control Act of 2011.

“There is a will to try to find a way [out of this] and an understanding we need to and time is very short,”Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl of Arizona, the No. 2 Senate Republican, told reporters outside his office. “The commonality is pretty apparent between the two different proposals. The objective here to keep working together and find a way to work through it.”

There’s still one major split between the two proposals: the Boehner plan would require two short-term debt-limit increases, an idea that the White House and Reid have resoundly rejected.

But with conservative opposition mounting to the Boehner plan, and Reid’s proposal facing slim odds in the Senate, senior Democratic and Republican senators believe they may have to split the difference between the two plans in order to get a deal to avert economic default.

South Dakota Sen. John Thune, the Republican Policy Committee chairman, said he didn’t think there was a “big difference” between the two proposals, while Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), No. 3 in GOP leadership, said he was hopeful a deal could be worked out between Boehner, Reid and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

“What would be best, instead of having a Republican plan competing with a Democratic plan, would be to have the speaker, Sen. Reid, Sen. McConnell recommend to us a single plan,” Alexander told POLITICO.

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), who caucuses with Democrats, said the two parties should be able to reach a compromise and hike the $14.3 trillion debt limit by next Tuesday, when Treasury officials say the government will hit its legal borrowing limit and run out of money to pay its bills.

“Normal people would be able to bridge that gap and say, ‘Hey, look, we’ve got two major parts of our two proposals [that] are the same, so let’s figure out a way to compromise,’” Lieberman told POLITICO.

Lieberman, the Homeland Security Committee chairman, said he’s now leaning toward backing the Reid proposal. But he’s joined Republicans in panning a major provision in the legislation which counts $1 trillion in savings from winding down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, something critics dismiss as an accounting “gimmick” since those savings had already been expected from the troop drawdown.

“The Majority Leader proposed a plan yesterday that’s nothing more than another attempt to pull the wool over the eyes of the American people,” McConnell said on the Senate floor.

Facing opposition from the Senate’s top Republican, it’s highly unlikely that Reid can muster the 60 votes needed to pass the bill out of the Senate. His deputy, Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), said he expected to have strong support from his 53-member Democratic caucus but wouldn’t predict passage.

“We’re OK on the Democratic side,” Durbin said. “I don’t know if we have any Republican votes.”

Indeed, some conservatives are ready to do battle in the Senate to defeat the proposals, saying both are weak in cutting spending and now is the time to draw the line.

“I’ve said from the beginning that I will oppose the conditions that don’t satisfy the conditions I’ve outlined,” said Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah). “I will use tools at my disposals if necessary to oppose them, including that one if necessary,” referring to a filibuster.

A handful of centrist Republicans and Democrats remained noncommittal. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said she was still reviewing it as was fellow moderate Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine).